The Pirate Bay may soon be blocked in the UK

Internet service providers in the UK may soon be forced to block access to file-sharing giant The Pirate Bay, after the British High Court ruled that the website and its users engage in large-scale copyright infringement, reports the Guardian. Members of the British music industry are pushing for The Pirate Bay’s blockage.

“In my judgment, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] do authorise its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting,” wrote Justice Richard Arnold, who handed down the decision. “I conclude that both users and the operators of [The Pirate Bay] infringe the copyrights of the claimants … in the UK.”

Justice Arnold continued, saying that the operators of The Pirate Bay “take no steps to prevent infringement,” but instead “actively encourage it and treat any attempts to prevent it (judicial or otherwise) with contempt.”

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a music industry group, has heralded the decision as a victory for musicians, and creative industries in general.

“The high court today ruled that The Pirate Bay is illegal. The site defrauds musicians and causes huge damage to the music industry and wider creative industries,” said Geoff Taylor, chief executive of BPI, in a statement. “The ruling helps clarify the law on website blocking and we will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm.”

Last October, Justice Arnold ruled in favor of a coalition of Hollywood studios, including Warner Bros, Paramount, Disney, Universal, Fox, and Columbia, which required the UK’s largest ISP, BT, to block access to Newzbins2, which was founding to promote copyright infringement “on a grand scale.”

The High Court’s decision on The Pirate Bay comes just weeks after Sweden’s Supreme Court upheld the sentences of the site’s four co-founders, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Carl Lundström, all of whom have been ordered to spend time in jail, and pay a combined fine of $6.7 million, for allowing users to break copyright law.